Costs
of AR No Expansion on Medicaid About Half of Other Two Choices -

Dept
of Human Services Graph

To GOP Legislators:

I understand Arkansas legislators heard a two-hour
presentation at the House yesterday. Oh, that people back home could have the
same opportunity. We are fortunate to get two minutes of your time.
I am sure legislators in Washington heard similar presentations before they
voted for the stimulus bill and the bailout bill and voted for all those other
things at which people back home shook their heads in disbelief. Ask any
lawyer or anyone who ever sat on a jury: Hear one side of the story,
and it looks like a slam dunk case; hear the other side and you realize it was
not as it appeared at all. Please delay this vote another year and give the
people back home time to give their points on the issue. The tactic that has
always worked with the Republicans is the scare tactic. Please don't
succumb to that this year. You will also be cutting the rug out from under our
next GOP Governor candidate - and Senator candidate to defeat Pryor because the
candidate's main point would be Pryor voted for Obamacare; but if state
Republicans vote for it, they won't have that plank to stand on.

According to Arkansas Department of Human Services graph at this link
http://www.arkansasonline.com/medicaidcosts/ you can see that
the No Expansion (legislature do nothing on Obamacare) will cost
about half what the private option would cost over the next ten
years (the private option is
the one the LEADERS of the Republican party & Beebe are pushing with SB1020
and HB1143) and about half what the traditional Medicaid program
would cost. These are close to the figures that Nick Horton with
Arkansas Project has been using and the ones I used in a former
email. On their bar graph the Private option and the
traditional Medicaid expansion (Obama's plan) run almost neck and neck for every
year through 2023 with the Private Option being only slightly less
every year. It seems that our leaders are also
forgetting that the federal money is not free money; it comes out of
our pockets as well.

According to an article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, "The
federal government has offered to pay the health-care costs for the
estimated 250,000 eligible Arkansans until 2017. By 2020, the state
would take on 10 percent of the cost of health care for this new
population. There would still be some expense to the state in the
first three years because the federal offer does not cover
administrative costs. Arkansas legislators are weighing three
options, all of which will cost the state something. They can help
250,000 poor Arkansans purchase private health insurance, expand the
traditional Medicaid program, or do nothing."
http://www.arkansasonline.com/medicaidcosts/ (Title of
article "Medicaid options: What the state would pay"